Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 5.5 - Chapter 13

Secured Conditions

After my private meeting with Sigiswald, I explained to Sylvester and the others what the royal family had told me: namely, that they had thought they were treating Ehrenfest especially well. There had been plenty of misunderstandings at work between us, but they hadn’t simply wanted to dump the entire burden on us, so I believed there was still room for negotiation.

Next, I reported that the royal family was going to hold another Dedication Ritual on the last day of the Archduke Conference, and that I had put forward our conditions, assuming they wanted to adopt me on good terms. I also made sure to mention my repeated reminders that I was merely expressing my own opinions and that the aub had the final say—I wanted Sylvester and the others to recognize my efforts to avoid a repeat of the mess last year.

Sylvester must have been irritated that, after failing to secure his agreement, the royal family had attempted to go behind his back by obtaining my approval instead; he praised me for blocking them and stressing that the final decision was not mine to make.

Not long after my debrief, Sylvester received another summons from the royal family. He was to meet with them again in two days’ time.

“Alright, Rozemyne,” Sylvester said upon his return, “tell me exactly how you negotiated with the royal family.” We were in a meeting room without Florencia or his retainers, and he looked unmistakably angry for some reason. His eyes narrowed, he started grinding a finger into my cheek.

“Pooey...?”

“No! This time, we had our meeting without retainers so that we could speak more clearly—and guess what I discovered. You were unbelievably rude to Prince Sigiswald in the archive, weren’t you?”

I cocked my head at Sylvester, unsure why he was scolding me. “I told you that I was blunt with Prince Sigiswald, since he promised not to punish me for stating my opinion. Was he really so wounded that he found it necessary to complain to you? That’s not very manly of him.”

“No, he wasn’t complaining. He wanted me to warn you not to take the same tone with anyone else, since he was confident you would. The stress of listening to him made my stomach ache.”

So he really isn’t manly.

If we had agreed to speak as nobles, then even I would have had the common sense to be more discreet. Sigiswald had told me to be blunt, so it was kind of messed up that he was now complaining about it.

“To return to your original request,” I said, “yes, I did push for the royal family to host another Dedication Ritual. That was only to buy us some time, though, and I don’t believe I did much else that could be described as negotiating. Bear in mind that I do not have the authority to make any actual decisions. At most, you could say that I threatened them a little to ensure they would spare Ferdinand.”

“Hold on just a moment!” Sylvester exclaimed, his hands on his head in disbelief. “I just assured Prince Sigiswald that you didn’t threaten him—that he must have misunderstood you, since you would never resort to such means. But he was right?!”

I felt kind of bad knowing that Sylvester had worked so hard to defend me, but... indeed, the prince was correct. My threats were entirely deliberate.

“No matter how much concern I show for Ferdinand, nobody in Ahrensbach will treat him as family. Prince Anastasius even told me that I would need to take matters into my own hands. Asking the royal family to help him through normal means did not work, so I was forced to make use of the rare opportunity that the archive afforded me. Had that conversation taken place anywhere else, in the presence of others, I would have been executed. Is that not true?”

Being in the archive had allowed me to speak my mind. Of course, if my efforts ended in failure, I would need to think of some other means to accomplish my goal.

“In any case,” Sylvester said, “the royal family understood you loud and clear, so you don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

Hope welled up in my heart. “They accepted my requests for Ferdinand to receive better living conditions and not be deemed guilty by association?”

Sylvester responded with a tired nod. “Yeah. They said they would order Ahrensbach to give him a hidden room.”

“Yesss! And the other conditions?”

“They approved more or less every single one. In a way... I’m pretty sure that’s all thanks to you.”

He went on to tell me how the rest of the meeting had proceeded. The first time he was summoned, they had only used an area-affecting sound-blocking magic tool, but this time they had spoken alone, without any attendants or guards present, and used individual sound-blockers. Then, in this extremely contained environment, the thoroughly exhausted royal family had gone through my conditions, made sure that they were accurate and properly understood, then confirmed that everyone was on the same page.

Sylvester continued, “As far as I can tell, the royal family is pretty divided when it comes to how to deal with you.”

Trauerqual, for example, believed that anyone who obtained the Grutrissheit deserved to become the next Zent, and that they would need to be obeyed without question. In his eyes, preparing a villa and such for me was an absurd misplacement of priorities; he instead maintained that I should be welcomed into the royal palace as the country’s next queen while he moved into a villa instead.

“He also believes that one is best served making one’s own faction,” Sylvester informed me, “and that Zents need to surround themselves with people they can trust. That is precisely why he opened our first meeting with an offering to accept as many Ehrenfest nobles into the Sovereignty as possible—and was shocked when we declined.”

There was also the matter of my marriage. Everyone knew that engagements were a crucial means of creating new factions, so while Trauerqual wanted to adopt me for the sake of obtaining the Grutrissheit, he would refrain from getting involved afterward. He apparently believed that the new Zent should rule Yurgenschmidt as they saw fit.

“That all sounds very nice,” I replied, “but would that not boil down to King Trauerqual dumping his burden on me?”

“Prince Sigiswald seemed to feel the same way. He said that simply obtaining the Grutrissheit wouldn’t be enough for someone to rule.”

Because I was from Ehrenfest, I wouldn’t have much authority to speak of, nor would I be able to rely on the greater duchies to help me. I doubted that Trauerqual would do much to support me either, since he was so against getting involved with my rule. These facts had spurred Sigiswald to ask a very important question: How much could a mere student really be expected to do with just the Grutrissheit? Abandoning me to rule on my own wasn’t an option. That was why he had instead proposed that I marry into the royal family after my adoption; it would introduce the least discord, allowing me to depend on them as well as their existing support base.

Even then, Trauerqual had refused to budge. “Your position is sound, but we do not have the final say on this matter,” he had said. “The next Zent must decide our fates.”

“You agreed with Prince Sigiswald, I’m told,” Sylvester remarked to me.

“I simply believe that, if they’re willing to accept my terms, marrying him is the least I can do.”

According to Sylvester—and perhaps unsurprisingly—Anastasius had disagreed with both his father’s and brother’s positions. “He said that obtaining the Grutrissheit and the authority of a Zent would not give you the political aptitude necessary to rule a country. Until then, he had seemed to be of one mind with Prince Sigiswald, but after that...”

“Yes? What did he say?”

“Well, er... In his words: ‘We cannot entrust Yurgenschmidt to such a book-obsessed, maladapted gremlin. Her temple-born customs would clash with our own, and society would descend into chaos. For all our sakes, we must take the Grutrissheit from her as soon as possible.’ Let me tell you, King Trauerqual dragged him over the coals for that.”

“I mean, that was rude... but he’s not wrong.”

Anastasius had gone on to say that, if taking the Grutrissheit from me was an option, he would ease the country’s frustrations toward Ehrenfest by having me serve the Sovereign temple as its High Bishop until my coming of age. Then, he would allow me to return home. If taking the Grutrissheit from me wasn’t an option, he would propose that they hide my status as Zent, make me Sigiswald’s third wife, and confine me to a library whenever my assistance wasn’t needed. That, he had said, would be the most peaceful solution.

In response, Trauerqual had scolded Anastasius for being so disrespectful to the next Zent and subsequently forbidden him from speaking to me in the underground archive.

“King Trauerqual stated that he would do his utmost to follow Ehrenfest’s requests,” Sylvester said, “but he also very apologetically asked if you could, as the next Zent, be more considerate of the Sovereignty’s budget and the state of its treasury.”

“Is that somehow relevant to Ehrenfest...?”

Sylvester glared at me. “You asked for your own extravagant book room, didn’t you?”

In a shocking twist, the book room I’d requested would cost an absolute fortune, and the royal family was agonizing over what to do. The other conditions had been trivially easy to meet in comparison.

“Your book room was the only condition that the royal family could not agree to,” Sylvester continued. “So, Ehrenfest agreed to give up on it.”

“NOOOOOO! You gave up the one thing I told you I wasn’t going to budge on?! That’s so mean! MY BOOK ROOOOOOM!”

I screamed until there was no more air in my lungs, then clutched my head, started gasping for breath, and glared at Sylvester with tears in my eyes. I’d worked so hard during my meeting with Sigiswald, but he hadn’t figured out what mattered to me most.

Sigiswald... you colossal dummy!

“Quiet down, Rozemyne. It was a decision to be made between the Zent and me. Accept it. You said that you would obey any conclusions we came to, did you not?”

“GAAAH! I DID SAY THAT!”

That makes me the colossal dummy!

“They’ll allow you to visit the palace library and their various archives as you please, so it’s not like you won’t have any books at all. Plus, the other conditions were far more important than you getting to have your own book room. We can thank your ridiculous request for the fact that they were all accepted, but come on. Give it up. The royal family looked completely drained.”

Sigiswald had arrived at the underground archive expecting a classy conversation with a noble, only to come face-to-face with an unwavering merchant and receive a firm dressing-down for not being on the same page as Ehrenfest. The encounter had apparently made him lose confidence in how other people saw the royals, among other things, and the report he had subsequently delivered to his family had made them all cradle their heads in agony.

The royal family had clear reasons and public-facing excuses to hold a Dedication Ritual on the last day of the Archduke Conference. They also had handwritten instructions detailing how to perform it—courtesy of yours truly—so their only concern would need to be changing everybody’s schedule. Even then, they had so very much to gain from the ritual that it was worth being a little bit pushy to make it happen.

Still, there was only so much that the royal family could manage. Ehrenfest’s demands had largely made sense, given its situation, and our request for Ferdinand to receive better living conditions hadn’t been too unreasonable either. My book room was the sole exception; it simply wasn’t feasible, no matter how they tried to approach it.

“In the first place, what were you even thinking by asking for your own book room?”

“Hm? Is it not normal to have one in one’s home?”

There were book rooms in Ehrenfest’s temple and castle, and the Ehrenfest Dormitory had a dedicated reading corner. Ferdinand also had a library in his estate—though that was now “Myne” to love and to cherish. A villa fit for the adopted daughter of a king would surely have a book room, at the very least.

“Leaving Ehrenfest would require me to give up the library that Ferdinand gave me, would it not?” I asked. “Was it really that strange that I wanted a new one as compensation? It seems unthinkable that the quality of one’s life should worsen after being adopted by the king.”

“Aah... It makes my head ache that you equate the quality of your life to books, but in any case—they’ll prepare somewhere for you to store the books you already own. Just take whatever you want from Ferdinand’s library.”

“Excuse me? It’s my library! The handover has already taken place, thank you very much.”

“Whatever.” Sylvester waved away my complaint, uninterested. “Just don’t drain the country’s budget with your book-related demands.”

“I never intended to. If a newly made library was too much to ask for, then I would have been fine with Prince Sigiswald giving me his. That was what Ferdinand did, right? I just want new books to read—my future husband allowing me to share his would suffice, even. The shelves could easily have been filled with transcriptions of the palace library’s books, so...”

“Ferdinand, are you the reason she’s like this...?” Sylvester muttered to himself, shaking his head. He then looked straight at me and said, “Rozemyne, a little tip: very few people own as many books as Ferdinand once did. Prince Sigiswald, for example, only borrows books from the palace library—he’s never bought one to keep. Can you imagine, then, how many books the royal family would have needed to buy to fulfill your request? Trying to match Ferdinand’s collection would bankrupt Yurgenschmidt.”

The strength drained from my body. I wouldn’t obtain any new books from moving to the Sovereignty.

“This is awful. Just awful,” I groaned. “How can that man call himself a prince when he doesn’t own a single book? He’s crushing the dreams of little girls everywhere! On top of that, he already has two wives. How am I supposed to make my heart throb for him?! I mean, he can’t even make a single library to propose to me with!”

“The heck are you saying?” Sylvester griped. He was baffled, but this was a matter of grave importance.

“Wilfried told me I could do as I pleased with the Ehrenfest Dormitory’s bookshelf. Wilfried! Yet an actual prince can’t promise me a single book. I can’t believe I’m having to give up on my book room, even after I suggested moving into the palace library.”

The quality of my life wasn’t the only thing on the decline—so was the quality of my fiancés. This was a nightmare. It had never even crossed my mind that being adopted into the royal family would cost me so much.

“I’m stunned,” I said. “Depressed, even. Prince Sigiswald is the biggest disappointment of my life.”

In an instant, my scant few reasons to be optimistic about moving to the Sovereignty had been completely obliterated. I had planned to spend the next year devoted to my handover duties, content in the knowledge that a new book room awaited me, but now my motivation was swirling down the drain. Swoooooosh.

“I’ll still go, since they promised to improve Ferdinand’s living conditions and spare him from punishment, but... I don’t want to.” A deep sigh escaped me. “To think I’m going to lose my library...”

“Drop it already. They might not provide any books, but they’ll at least make the room for you. And you have that book deposit system, right? We’ll send you the ones we make here, and your shelves will start filling up in no time. What’s the difference?”

My move would introduce a considerable delay between the books being made and them ending up in my hands. In other words, I was still going to be worse off. How was he unable to grasp something so simple?

“Anyway, that’s enough about books,” Sylvester said. “What’s done is done. We need to discuss the other decisions that were made. Listen closely, since this is going to determine how you should approach these things.” His unilateral decision to move the conversation along frustrated me, but there was nothing I could do; no amount of complaining from me would change an agreement made between the king and an archduke.

My shoulders slumped, I could only allow Sylvester to continue.

“The royal family will oversee another Dedication Ritual, as you suggested. Then, with a surplus of mana under their belts, King Trauerqual and Prince Sigiswald will spend the next year trying to obtain the Grutrissheit. If their attempts end in failure, they will adopt you as planned.”

Not even the slightest trace of a smile remained on my face. “If they do obtain the Grutrissheit without us, will they still meet our requests...?”

“As payment for our help in the underground archive, they will grant Ferdinand a hidden room and ensure that he is not punished alongside his fiancée. That’s all, though. And, uh... while they’re going to make an attempt on their own, they expect it to be a formidable task, if not an impossible one. King Trauerqual is only encouraging it because he believes the royal family shouldn’t rest on its laurels and expect a student from another duchy to do everything for them.”

Well, if our Ferdinand-related conditions were still going to be met, that was fine with me. I didn’t want to move to the Sovereignty in the first place, so their resolve was much appreciated.

So much so that I want to shower them with ultra-nasty rejuvenation potions. I won’t actually do that, though. They may be effective, but I would definitely be suspected of an attempted poisoning.

“There’s a lot of groundwork to be laid,” Sylvester informed me, “so our next year is going to be spent preparing. As things stand, I will need to disown you during the next Archduke Conference, at which point the king will adopt you instead. On the surface, we will maintain the status quo, but Ehrenfest and the royal family will actually be getting ready for said exchange.” He lowered his voice and said, “Is that understood?”

I nodded; that we needed to keep this adoption a secret was a forgone conclusion. It was good, then, that Ehrenfest had already taken complete control of its information network, making it much easier for us to keep to ourselves and work in the shadows. We would manage.

Sylvester continued, “I plan to clear the room of retainers when we discuss this back in Ehrenfest. We can decide who to tell after that.”

“We will need to inform Melchior’s and my retainers, as well as those in the temple. The handover and their future plans will require some deliberation. Oh, and when will we tell the Gutenbergs? How will we teach their technologies to the Sovereignty? Will they only need to visit, as per usual, or will they actually have to move there? We will need to give them plenty of notice, else the burden will prove too great.” My next year was sure to be spent managing the temple, the Gutenbergs, and my personnel.

“I don’t expect things to be easy for the Gutenbergs, but can that stuff not wait until you’ve been adopted and gotten things ready for your craftspeople? You’re always on my back about not rushing the commoners.”

“I will discuss it with Benno and decide from there. In any case, we will need to approach the Sovereign scholars and ensure that the necessary documents are sent as soon as possible. In the meantime, would you grant me permission to share retainers with Melchior, which you refused to permit before? I am suffering a severe lack of archknights at the Royal Academy.”

Simply traveling between the dormitory and the auditorium was fine with my current squad, but I would need archknights to visit the underground archive, and I wanted as much time to educate Melchior’s retainers as I could get.

“It’ll depend on Melchior’s answer, but... eh, sure. By the way... although we’ll be acting as though nothing’s changed for the next year, how do you feel about Wilfried now that you’ll no longer be engaged to him?”

Despite my best attempts to avoid them, my thoughts about Wilfried came to mind. “To be honest, I don’t feel anything about our engagement coming to an end. We were always more like siblings than a couple, and we’ve barely even interacted in quite some time. He didn’t even appreciate the ordonnanzes I sent him. Above all else, though, we haven’t done any of the rituals necessary for an engagement.”

We hadn’t traded feystones, and we had decided not to start color-mixing until we were a bit older. In short, our engagement had been a verbal agreement with the king’s approval and nothing more. Sigiswald was going to replace Wilfried, sure, but that was pretty much the only change; I wasn’t emotionally invested in either political marriage, nor was I romantically interested in either of my suitors.

“However,” I continued, “I do recognize that this change of plans will impact Wilfried. His engagement to me was the only reason that so many chose to overlook his connection to Lady Veronica and the fact that he entered the Ivory Tower. I regret that the future he spent so long working toward is going to be shattered out of the blue, and as the result of a royal decree he has no power to overturn.”

“Yeah...” Sylvester muttered in agreement, the picture of a father worrying for his son. He wasn’t thinking about me at all, and that realization made me sigh.

“But you’re aware that Wilfried won’t be the only one having to endure the life-changing consequences of a royal decree, right? I never intended to leave Ehrenfest, yet here I am, at risk of losing all of my belongings and everyone who’s precious to me. And don’t forget Ferdinand, who’s gone through that already. Wilfried, on the other hand, will get to stay in Ehrenfest. You need only look after him as his father.”

Wilfried would at least get to stay with his loving family—and that was enough to make me envy him. There was a pregnant pause before Sylvester replied:

“You’re right.”

A few days later, an invitation from the royal family arrived, and Sylvester formally announced the Dedication Ritual that was going to be held on the last day of the conference. The nobles let out joyous cries upon hearing that they would no longer need to endure pressure from the other duchies, but they were also surprised to have been ordered to participate as well in order to gain more divine protections; very few of them had participated in a religious ceremony before.

“Rozemyne’s retainers,” Sylvester said, “I expect you to be there in your blue robes, supporting and protecting everyone throughout the ritual.”

“Understood.”

We would only need to show up and perform the ritual on the specified date, so there was nothing for us to prepare. I needed only to continue visiting the underground archive until the last day of the Archduke Conference.

“So, the royal family is hosting a Dedication Ritual...” Hannelore said during lunch. “I am told that it was made possible thanks to Ehrenfest, who wished to answer the calls of the other duchies and teach them about religious ceremonies. Even we of Dunkelfelger are thrilled to be participating. Ehrenfest must be finding it difficult.”

“I admit,” I replied, “I did not expect Dunkelfelger to take part. Your research has already demonstrated that one can obtain divine protections through the ceremonies performed before and after ditter games.”

“We are interested in other religious ceremonies as well, it would seem. There are only so many divine protections we can obtain through our ditter rituals, no?”

That surprised me. Maybe this was rude, but I’d never expected those from Dunkelfelger to care about anything other than ditter.

Because, I mean, they’re always going on about it, right? So, like... Yeah.

According to Hannelore, the scholars and attendants wanted divine protections from other gods as well. “We also want our adults to have another chance to perform the divine protections ritual. My father and mother are currently agonizing over how to involve our laynobles and mednobles as well, despite them not usually being able to attend the Archduke Conference.”

Magdalena nodded in agreement—she was listening too—while Hildebrand bemoaned the fact that he could not participate in the ritual.

“Hannelore will not be able to participate this year either,” Magdalena said chidingly. “Some have suggested that it be incorporated into the Royal Academy’s lesson plan, and that Klassenberg and Ehrenfest perform it annually as joint research. Be patient until you enroll.”

“By then, it will already be too late...” Hildebrand grumbled, his lips pursed.

“Will the majority of duchies be participating in the ritual, as one might expect?” Hannelore asked.

Magdalena nodded. “Indeed. Ahrensbach has declined, as they have Ferdinand to teach them, but every other duchy has announced its intention to take part.”

I remembered Ferdinand writing that he had traveled around Ahrensbach with a group of nobles for Spring Prayer. Simply having experience with religious ceremonies wouldn’t be enough, though; if one wanted new divine protections, they would need to repeat the divine protections ritual.

“Would it not be wise for them to participate anyway?” I asked with a quizzical tilt of my head. “Most nobles simply want a chance to obtain new divine protections.”

Magdalena gave me a cold smile, as if she were holding back some much darker emotions. “According to Lady Detlinde, they will be able to repeat ‘that trifling ritual’ as many times as they desire once she becomes Zent.”

“Did she actually say that?! Really?!”

“Three times, courtesy of her ordonnanz. Her retainers’ desperate attempts to stop her were included in the recording as well, but in any case, the entire royal family was present for it.”

AAAAAAH! It might have required me to threaten a prince, but I’m so glad that I managed to save Ferdinand.